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Kaito KA007 - Portable radio. | 
 enlarge | Brand: Kaito
Category: CE
List Price: $59.95
Buy New: $34.90
You Save: $25.05 (42%)
New (4) from $34.90
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 11942
Color: Gray//blue//brown
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.5 x 2.3 x 5.5
Warranty: Manufacturer warranty for 1 year from date of purchase.
MPN: KA007
Model: KA007
EAN: 6923235869010
ASIN: B000670UW0
Availability: Usually ships in 2-3 business days
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| Features:
| • | Emergency AM/FM/SW/TV/Weather band radio with wide frequency coverage | | • | Four power sources: Solar, dynamo, battery, AC adaptor | | • | built-in efficient DYNAMO CRANKING SYSTEM can also recharge the internal NiMH battery pack | | • | Thousands pieces sold to US army, very positive feedback received | | • | 90 days money back guarantee and 1 year limited warranty |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This rugged, precision build portable radio gets AM, FM, Short Wave, Weather and TV sound and operates without electricity or batteries. The KA007 runs on five different kinds of power. In addition to electric current or AA batteries, this radio also has internal rechargeable batteries that recharge using solar power or a hand crank.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 I wish this radio had better sound July 12, 2008
I wish this radio had better sound. I'm still looking for another radio with great sound, good reception, and good battery life. This is not it. The sound is marginal, the reception has some flaws inherent in low cost radios. The battery life is excellent. I kept the radio for its crank feature in case of an emergency. I live in a metropolitan area with lots of hills which makes for difficult reception conditions.
It reminds me a little bit of the multi-band radios I had when I was young, and had hours and hours to experiment. Those radios featured cheap electronics which did not have the best performance possible, but I did not know that at the time. The Kaito is the same. I guess you get what you pay for. I would classify this as a special use radio, good for the ability to get along on crank power if necessary. For me personally, if it came in a bigger box, with a bigger speaker and a bit more fidelity, I would probably use it all the time. But it's a tiny little thing, smaller than you would expect, lightweight, with an all plastic case. Other reviewers mention the crank itself, which is made of plastic, and I suppose possible to break.
Sound: This is my biggest complaint, but I don't see it addressed in other reviews, so I wonder if I have an idiosyncratic response to the way this particular radio sounds.
In my opinion, the best sounding band is AM. In fact I wonder if the designers optimized the sound for the AM band, with good sensitivity and selectivity to boot.
I have another radio that gets weather band, and the difference between the way that one sounds and this one, well the Kaito is intelligible but not tolerable for pleasure listening of the weather band. I want to say the computer generated NOAA guys sounds especially grating. I know, I know, what kind of geek wants to hear the buoy temperatures all morning?
Most of my listening is FM, and this is where I had the most significant problems. I listen mostly to two stations, one strong, but the other one I couldn't even find until I lowered the antenna. I think they call that front end overload. It's caused by too much signal. I finally found my other station by lowering the telescoping antenna all the way, but leaving the remaining stub pointed straight up. If I put my hand on the antenna fuzz and other stations appear. I thought this radio would do a better job at rejecting other signals. Instead I find that strong FM stations appear all over the place, not only at their assigned places on the dial. If you live very close to an FM transmitter or tower farm you know what I mean.
The other problem I am having is that the volume control has a point where it goes from very soft to very loud, not a dirty potentiometer, just a cheap one, just at about the volume I would like, so it's so difficult to set the volume that this problem alone keeps me from using this radio on a regular basis. [If you live where all the stations are weak this radio would be great, because I never have to use more than 5% of the audio amplification capability to get all the volume I need.] This seems to be a real problem only on FM. The FM sound quality on the teeny speaker is only sufficient if you listen to pop music at background volume, but is likely to disappoint otherwise.
It has solar power. Put it in direct sunlight and voila. Beach radio?
 My husband loves this thing. June 11, 2008
I got it for him last year as a gift and he messes with it all the time. Very portable, self cranking so it's good for the environment and he loves the off channels it picks up like emergency chatter. I like it because if the power goes out at least I can still listen to the TV.
Just watch the antenna, breaks very easily. But even if it does we found no problem in having them send us another one.
Great battery performance April 12, 2008
A great little radio, seems to run forever on a set of batteries. The tuner is good; it pulls in the public radio station that I've had trouble getting with other more expensive radios because of the local hills.
There are a few quibbles. Some reviewers mention a problem with the tuning dial. I grew up before digital radios were introduced. I don't notice any problem. The volume knob is another story. Movement of seemingly a few millimeters changes the volume from a whisper to blaring.
A minor inconvenience is that there's is no way to know at a glance when the AA batteries are dead and the radio is instead running on the internal rechargeable battery. And it won't tune in the weather band which is mentioned in an earlier review. This is not important to me since where I live the weather is relatively serene compared to most of the country.
Kaito KA-007 August 3, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
looks like it came out of a box of cocoa puffs, doesn't sound much better. analog tuning stinks, very little band separation. i'd much rather spend 2-3 times as much for something i would actually use than this toy. it's junk...
Great compact radio for every day use. February 22, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a great little radio and is more compact than I envisioned it being from the picture found here. My wife had bought me a Eton/Grundig FR-300 but the generator handle stripped out after about a week's worth of use. Since I loved the weather band on that radio before it broke, I was on a quest to replace the Grundig with something more reliable. I didn't even care if it cost more, I was after quality. I spotted the KA007 here and read reviews here and elsewhere and decided what the heck, why not order one. When it arrived, I found it to be a much lower profile radio than the Eton model and it also has more bells and whistles for a lower price than the Eton. The radio is able to recieve a lot of stations in my area and the weather band gets the weather station for our area very strong and clear. The short wave, TV and AM/FM bands all work well also.
Battery life is excellent with this radio. I'd say you can get about a months worth of use out of three long life alkaline name brand batteries with the radio being played an average of a 1/2 hr to 2 hrs. per day.
One thing to note is that the a/c adapter will charge up the built in NiMH battery pack so you may want to run it off batteries or solar so you don't wear out the battery pack as quickly. That's just a speculation though and the battery pack may still last a long time even though the adapter does charge it up every time it's plugged in. Since I want to be able to use the crank feature in an emergency, I just didn't want to chance killing the battery pack by keeping a high charge on it all the time when I can just as easily use the radio on batteries and not chance killing that internal battery when I need it the most.
I don't really have any real complaints on this radio. Some things that might concern others are that the radio has a relatively small on/off/volume knob and the tuning dial is spaced rather tight with no fine tuning option like on the Eton models. This radio offers good bang for the buck. I think the majority of people looking for a compact, quality emergency radio will be pleased with this. Oh, and unlike the Eton's, the crank handle recesses nicely into the back of the radio for a nice compact profile, unlike the Etons, which stick out of the side and just look plain ugly in that position. One good thing about the Eton though- the cloth carrying case the Eton came in from LL Bean, fits the Kaito perfectly. So the Eton wasn't a total bust. (grin).
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